451 Research - Biography

William is a cofounder of The 451 Group. As VP of Research, he is responsible for the Cloud & IT Service Markets channel at 451 Research. This channel provides a point of intellectual convergence for 451 Research around cloud computing, in much the same way that the industry is converging on cloud from all points. In addition to keeping tabs on players entering the cloud and IT services space with disruptive business models, new technology and innovations in service delivery, William has also created 451's Digital Economics unit. This is currently focused on helping end users, vendors and investors understand complex and confusing cloud pricing mechanisms in order to compare the cost of services (hosted, hybrid and on-premises), the cost of entry and price of participation in new markets.

William also created 451 Research's early-adopter research program, working with enterprise end users and innovators. Currently focused on cloud computing, he has identified and tracked other early-adopter markets, including grid computing and virtualization, since the company was formed in 2000. William also leads 451 Research's participation within the European Commission and numerous other EC research projects. William is a member of the EC Cloud Expert Group, coauthor of The Future of Cloud Computing ? Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010, and a regular speaker at industry and 451 conferences, He participates in numerous advisory boards and planning committees for UK and international industry bodies.

SolarWinds targets 'mission control' for cloud app managementMIS Impact Report - July, 2015The company is assembling a portfolio that it believes will be able to manage cloud applications across the stack. It's targeting SMEs with cloud-native applications and has further acquisitions planned. SolarWinds will need to work hard to differentiate here – the competition is very diverse.

Deutsche Börse Cloud Exchange is liveMIS Impact Report - July, 2015The DBCE was launched in May, having undergone a significant overhaul based on feedback from its beta service, which fired up in 2014. It's based on the Zimory cloud management and broker platform - Zimory owns a 51% stake in DBCE.

BT Cloud of Clouds - getting beyond infrastructureMIS Impact Report - July, 2015The company's Cloud of Clouds is the new organizing principle for BT Global Services. What is it? BT believes it will be able to offer end-to-end SLAs across a multi-cloud model.

It may go private, but Colt is definitely no longer 'coltandthecloud'MIS Impact Report - July, 2015The company has unplugged Managed Cloud, its IT services business, and will wind current customer contracts down over a two-and-a-half-year period. The decision to throw in the towel on IT services, and focus on network, voice and colocation, will send a chilling message to other IT-services hopefuls in the telco space.

Atos 'as a platform' is the driver for its digital-transformation agendaMIS Impact Report - June, 2015Atos has created a blueprint for delivering IT services to support digital transformation across a range of industries and sectors. 'Health as a Platform' and 'Government as a Platform' are two examples of the 'XaaS'-type capability that can be built upon these cloud management services.

HP upgrades customers into OpenStack - goes for brokersMIS Impact Report - June, 2015The announcement of CloudSystem 9 was one in a hatful of updates to the Helion portfolio that HP introduced at its recent Discover event. However, it's significant because CloudSystem 9 now ships with OpenStack on board - previously, it was offered with OpenStack 'compatibility.'

Cristie targets cloud role for migration and recovery servicesMIS Impact Report - June, 2015The company has been diversifying from its core market in bare-machine recovery and into migration for virtual, physical and cloud environments. Now, Cristie plans to package its technology to provide a single catalog of functions for customers to choose from.

HP Helion: bearing north, but precise course is unclearMIS Impact Report - June, 2015There are two reasons for HP to feel positive about its cloud strategy: it has a vision that shows it is thinking of the future, and it has a plan (on which it is executing) that shows commitment to that vision. Now it just needs to make Helion more than just a portfolio, but a proposition.

Verilume wants to put your 'dark IT' to work as cloud servicesMIS Impact Report - June, 2015Startup Verilume is the latest entrant in the cloud infrastructure market. The company is developing a broad platform – the Verilume Cloud Service – that is designed for developers to deploy next-generation applications and workloads without the hassle.

AppFormix targets cloud performance management with an emphasis on I/OMIS Impact Report - June, 2015The vendor is working on a new approach to cloud infrastructure performance monitoring, with a specific focus on I/O. The business problem it is addressing is the unpredictable performance of applications on the cloud and wasteful infrastructure use.

Differentiation in the time of OpenStackMIS Spotlight - June, 2015A core of six key projects provides the basis for 50% of OpenStack deployments. Providers moving forward with an OpenStack focus should offer all of these core services, pricing them low and selling them high; differentiation lies in the upselling of components that have yet to reach mainstream adoption.

OpenStack land grab continues apace as Big Blue buys Blue BoxTDM Deal Analysis - June, 2015With its private OpenStack cloud-as-a-service model, Blue Box is right in IBM's private/hybrid cloud wheelhouse. Big Blue now has managed local, dedicated hosted and public OpenStack options. Meanwhile, another OpenStack-focused player has been removed from the market.

Ciena feeds cloud hunger for the networkMIS Impact Report - June, 2015The company has strengthened its proposition for service providers, as well as Internet content and cloud providers, positioning new additions to its portfolio specifically to support Web-scale activities: service and content delivery, and user experience.

Egenera's Xterity: from cloud enabler to cloud providerMIS Impact Report - May, 2015The company has announced a fully managed wholesale IaaS cloud offering called Xterity based on its Egenera Cloud Suite. Its first partner is Equinix. Egenera provides the cloud hardware, cloud management, catalog and support.

Hong Kong: a hub and test lab, as long as window remains openMIS Spotlight - May, 2015The geographic, social and technological backdrop of Hong Kong is advantageous to firms doing business in the region or seeking to find a route into Northeast and Southeast Asia. Here, we look at the experience of three companies operating out of Hong Kong.

Huawei GAS 2015: getting cloud services rightMIS Impact Report - April, 2015Huawei's Cloud Services Group is architecting a new approach to the way it creates infrastructure, which will enable partners to deploy IaaS cloud services like AWS and Google. This includes the cloud services it will soon be selling to corporate customers in China.

Cloud Price Index - Private Edition, Part 1: the private lives of private cloudsMIS Spotlight - April, 2015In the Private Cloud edition of 451 Research's Cloud Price Index, we reveal average prices for proprietary and OpenStack private clouds, both self-managed and managed, and investigate the impact of manpower on TCO. Our benchmark indicators help service providers and enterprises understand and assess the private cloud services they offer and consume.

Cloud Price Index - Private Edition, Part 2: a two-cent 'tax' for commercial codeMIS Spotlight - April, 2015The most surprising finding in the first issue of the CPI - Private Edition is that a private cloud based upon proprietary, commercial orchestration software costs just $0.02 more per VM hour than one using an OpenStack distribution. In turn, a supported OpenStack distro is just $0.02 more expensive than a DIY OpenStack private cloud. Thus, the 'tax' imposed by proprietary packages vs. open source may be less onerous than supposed.

Cloud Price Index - Private Edition, Part 3: the best value TCO for private cloud?MIS Spotlight - April, 2015We use CPI data to quantify the relative TCO of in-house and managed deployments built on OpenStack and proprietary commercial offerings. Proprietary orchestration packages from VMWare, Microsoft and Red Hat have a lower TCO than OpenStack, but the price is lock-in. For those opting for OpenStack, distributions show clear value over the DIY approach. For those struggling to manage private cloud sprawl, though, managed services seem to be the way to go.

What's your type? HP's Cloud28+ dating agency for European cloud servicesMIS Impact Report - April, 2015As the federation of European cloud service providers, resellers, ISVs, developers and government agencies approaches its first birthday, its chief protagonist, HP, has provided a progress update on what is effectively a dating agency for cloud services in Europe.

VMware's vRealize is a 'best execution venue' toolMIS Impact Report - March, 2015As VMware continues the multiyear re-architecting of its systems and cloud management tools, what is now branded the 'vRealize' suite is shaping up to be an environment that offers customers a way to select the right resource, venue or service for applications and workloads.